That is not an easy question to answer. There was a time when democratic world leaders had a sense of duty, obligation and service and exhibited shame when they failed in any of those areas.
Those failures were often brought to light by protests from the population and of course media coverage of those protests.
But in the current global environment democratic world leaders by-and-large are either resistant or outright deny any culpability in the face of obvious truths and offer only a series of talking points with their true values being exhibited in their actions - often contrary to the lip service they provide.
In the internet age - there is literally an overabundance of media coverage and the more media companies there are the more options people have to choose how/where they consume their information. This overabundance of options has led to greater divisions as there are more and more options for people offering extreme views as every media company seeks to grab a larger "piece of the viewership pie". This growing divergence in the internet age has exasperated the divisions of population as everyone is now "selling"/forcing ideas instead of building consensus and using the art of persuasion.
This loss of consensus and the art of persuasion has caused irreparable damage.
The sad thing is no one cares. People only care about staking out their subjective opinions and anything to back them up. No one is listening.
When no one is listening you cannot build consensus and there is no art of persuasion.
In that environment can protests bring about change?
The protests I've seen here in America in the past 30 years have largely been ineffective. Oh sure they get a lot of media coverage. But they have not actually "moved the needle". There is no moral imperative in these protests it's merely people shouting "I'm right and you are wrong."
"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." I Corinthians 13:1
So nothing changes.
People show up for protests for a day or two, or over the weekend and then feebly return to their useless daily existence, their jobs, their daily realities.
In order for protests to have actual effective change they must start from a basis of love for others and the protests MUST be sustained. But I don't see that happening any time soon. It would mean to protest would entail actual personal sacrifice maybe even losing one's job to keep protesting. That will not happen unless the economy tanks when unemployment skyrockets due to corporate cutbacks and there will be no federal assistance to help people.
I certainly do NOT want to see that happen but I think things will have to get a lot worse before effective change actually happens.
We're just shouting at the ground. Just more background noise.
I grew up in a safe environment. Everything was safe. The food was safe. Society was safe. School was safe. Home was safe. But as I got older I learned that it wasn’t safe it was just protected.
There are people who still want to live in their own comfortable “protected” worlds. But protection is a myth. A legend elders tell children. It does not exist. And insisting it does exist, does not make it so.
Further I suggest that propagating this delusion is more harmful than preparing for the facts. The truth. Example: Climate change deniers often use their arguments as an excuse to keep from preparing for the consequences of climate change and taking action to slow it’s impact. And now with the pandemic, humanities approach to disease belies their own unpreparedness. Death and sickness has become unacceptable (even though it is inevitable) So they wear masks, they fight over it, they try to shame those who are “awake” and not afraid. They want a safe world where things don’t change. The climate doesn’t change. People don’t get sick and die. The world doesn’t change. Everything is safe.
What does this have to do with difficult music/difficult listening?
Like the quote from William S Burroughs in the Laurie Anderson video,
“language is a virus from outer space.”
Difficult music challenges a listeners perception of the norm. It suggests there is something else we need to consider. It suggests that we look into the dark corners. Difficult music is to sound what abstract expressionism was/is to art. And most people who have abstract art work treat if more as wallpaper than as something that has something to say/contribute to the conversation of our times. And in music, people typically do not choose to engage it because it requires them to think about what they are listening to. It is often difficult if not impossible to just hang it on a wall as pretty wallpaper for the soul. Difficult music is often derided as messy, juvenile, scary, ugly, inaccessible (not conforming to any known genre parameters) and ultimately ignored. It is the red-headed stepchild of the music world.
But we can learn much from difficult music. It is not something to be afraid of. The shadows are not scary if you enter with a flashlight. It can teach us about ourselves in ways we haven’t considered or dared think about. But to encounter and engage difficult music one must be prepared and perhaps that is the problem with our “protected”, “safe” elders they are not prepared and they do not know how to prepare the younger generation for the facts and truth of existence.
So, do you want to explore difficult music? Don’t know where to start?
Step One: Turn off the radio and TV – they are notorious “taste makers” that would rather keep you safe than expose you to truth. There are many artists that have helped me in preparing for the real world. I started learning about many “difficult” artists just from reading the underground music press (back in the 1980’s) when popular music was experiencing an explosion of variety. But difficult music existed long before I started reading about it.
Here are some artists you can start with (in no particular order):
Laurie Anderson Public Enemy
Einsturzende Neubauten/Blixa Bargeld The Last Poets
Alva Noto Lustmord
Laibach Rapoon/Zoviet*France
Robert Fripp/King Crimson et al Ornette Coleman
Diamanda Galas Lester Bowie
Sun Ra Terry Riley
The Art Ensemble of Chicago Steve Reich
Philip Glass (early works) Markus Reuter
Robert Rich Scott Walker (after 1994)
Merzbow Cabaret Voltaire
Swans Nurse With Wound
Matana Roberts Godspeed You! Black Emperor
The above artists all have work available on Youtube so enjoy your excursion into difficult music. Maybe in the future I’ll write about some of the specific recordings. Again this is just an introduction to difficult listening. Maybe not what you want to listen to in these difficult times but the music does speak to the truth of the times we are experiencing.
I’ll start you off with this Nurse With Wound video for the song BOTTOM FEEDER
Due to the Coronavirus “madness” that has gripped the world – This image is the first of several images I will be reposting selected creations of my “MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE” series from 2012/2013. The madness starts with the news media.
The clip below from Monty Python’s Holy Grail seems fitting since this coronavirus pandemic is being treated like the “black death” of the middle ages. Just some stuff to think about.
I urge caution and calm when the media would have us PANIC!
MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE #82 Do you want to feel more empowered?
Do you want be be happier?
Do you want to experience bliss more frequently?
Here’s what you do…
1. Stop watching news programming!
2. Ignore advertising!
3. Exit politics.
4. Tune in to your immediate environment.
5. Take responsibility for your self.
6. Control your self.
7. Step away from your monitor.
Isn’t it interesting that a computer screen is called a monitor? Do we monitor it or does it, by our constant viewing, monitor us?
... on being and becoming ... 